Family football

As this statue outside the Stadium of Light suggests, football is a family affair. My love of the game, and especially of Sunderland, my hapless hometown team, was nurtured by my father. Although he was never a die-hard, seen-every-game-since-he-was-in-nappies kind of fan, he was the man who introduced me to the game. Watching Football Focus together on Saturday lunchtime, resuming in front of the TV to see Final Score, then walking to the corner shop together to buy the Football Echo, distinctive pink newsprint and the miraculous condensation of the day’s action in your hand barely an hour after full time.

Dad was my first source of football conversation, my introduction to sporting lore. He took me to my first games and shared memories of going with his father to see some of the legends of the English game: Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews, Len Shackleton. Like many fans, he fell out of love with what football has become, lamenting the rise of big money and the consequent demise of the scrappy hopeful from the provincial town. Nonetheless, one of the last coherent conversations we had during his final time in hospital was about an impressively worked goal in a win over Blackburn. At a time when he was fading fast, it was a rare and precious moment to reconnect with the man I knew.

Many of those memories came back recently. The solemn ritual of receiving my first red-and-white scarf (40 years later, I still have it, albeit more pink-and-grey these days). The drive into town, anxious at every traffic light in case we were late for kick-off. The walk to the ground through an ever-increasing crowd, taking in the scent of dubious burgers, stale ale and cigarette smoke. That strange sense of aging by years in the course of an afternoon, of joining men (and in the early 80s, football crowds were still almost entirely male) and leaving the boys behind, if only for a few hours.

The trigger, predictably enough, was one of life’s role reversals. Now it’s my turn to be the dad and take my daughter to the match for the first time. Sunderland ran a “kids for a quid” offer, a lunchtime kick-off fit reasonably well with work, so it felt like the stars had aligned. Tickets purchased, scarf handed over (not that scarf, a new one clean enough to avoid any danger of being reported to social services) and off to the game.

In 2025, the football experience is very different from 1983. I made my home debut at a crumbling old-school Roker Park. We had seats in the Main Stand, but much of the crowd stood on the terraces. Although I’d never seen such a crowd in one place before, it was well below even the cruelly-reduced capacity following the neutering of the Roker End. Football in the 80s wasn’t a fashionable family day out. Even if social media influencers had been a thing, they wouldn’t have risked the undertow of menace that swirled around the grounds – nor the toilets that sanitation forgot, peeing against a brick wall in a malodorous shed.

And fandom is a different experience. In my childhood, TV football was limited to a handful of games a year: the cup final, the home internationals, maybe a big European game or two. A World Cup was a huge event. Even radio commentary was restricted: second half only, and from just one first division game that couldn’t be announced until after kick off at 3 o’clock.

The very scarcity of knowledge made it more valuable. Saturday afternoons (and some Tuesday evenings) revolved around local radio and some inadvertent exposure to Albanian communist propaganda. A day that didn’t have a stint chasing after a ball was a day wasted, and there was no greater heartbreak than the ominous hissing noise of a penny floater blootered into the rose bushes once too often.

My daughter encountered a large, comfortable, family-friendly stadium. The size of it made an impression before kick-off; the chorus of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ as the teams came out went down well. Having an entirely unobstructed view of the pitch was a bonus that Roker’s Main Stand never offered, either.

But some things never change. My home debut, against a relegation-haunted Swansea City, produced 90 dreary minutes of football punctuated by a couple of scrappy goals in a 1-1 draw. My daughter’s first game, against a relegation-threatened Hull City, was another typically frustrating Sunderland performance: a goalkeeping error gifted the visitors an early goal and subsequent huff-and-puff never looked like blowing the Tigers’ house down. “This isn’t what we came for,” someone muttered. Behind us, a lad in his club tracksuit sat in sullen silence, eyes bright with unshed tears. All too often, the football is a good day out spoiled by a couple of tedious hours watching the actual game.

Yet we’ll likely do it again. Not just for the game, and the hope that next time they might at least score a goal. But for the sense of community. For the café full of people in red-and-white shirts, for the chance to chat about the posters: “SUNLUN”, “Hunger. Melody. Decency.”, “Still hate Thatcher”. Give it a few years, and there might be time for memories of the great players I remember going see: from Gary Rowell and Bryan Robson to Bergkamp and Henry; Cantona to Kevin Phillips. And shared memories of our own, from the farcical to the fantastic. By bedtime, despite the disappointment of the game, there were already plans for the next match.